Revenues of GSM mobile services increase

PTISep 5, 2006, 06.20pm IST

NEW DELHI: Exhibiting healthy growth in operations, private GSM based mobile operators' revenue has gone up 49 per cent in the first quarter of the current financial year to Rs 5621 crore from Rs 3760 crore in the same quarter last year.Even as gross revenue has gone up the Average Revenue Per User (ARPU) has declined seven per cent in the same period from Rs 375 to Rs 347, Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) said."The continuous decline in ARPU is strong evidence of the ever improving affordability of the GSM mobile service, as a result of which the GSM service is achieving ever increasing growth levels," COAI Director General T V Ramachandran said in a statement.